


Family Is Family (No Matter Your Face)

by HK44



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Kane Chronicles - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Sibling, Siblings, good vibes all around tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 07:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HK44/pseuds/HK44
Summary: He waited.The look.As inevitable as it was annoying. He’d grown so used to it over the years, it didn’t matter how subtle someone tried to be, didn’t even matter if they were the same.They all did it and Carter could spot it in a second.But it never came.





	Family Is Family (No Matter Your Face)

“And this is Sadie,” Carter said, squeezing her wrist once her fingertips fluttered over his pal. She grinned at him and he turned back to Nico. “My sister.”

 

He waited.

The look.

As inevitable as it was annoying. He’d grown so used to it over the years, it didn’t matter how subtle someone tried to be, didn’t even matter if they were the same.

They all did it and Carter could spot it in a second.

But it never came.

Nico just smiled, natural, and shook Sadie’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she said as she took his grip in kind, the only slightest twitch of her lips and the swift glance to Carter from the corner of her eyes showing her surprise. “Walt’s said a lot about you.”

His father was Hades. His mother was an Italian dancer, the rebellious daughter of a high-ranked politician way back when.

The dead called him the Ghost King.

Carter looked him over fast. He knew he shouldn’t have and he normally  _didn’t,_ always annoyed when people did the same to him or to Sadie, but people had the funny way of spilling it, fast and quick, when introducing someone to either one of them. Oh, she’s bi too, Sadie. He’s trans, Carter. They’re mixed too, guys!

All that came up with Nico was Percy calling Carter up at three in the morning because Annabeth and Grover wouldn’t stop laughing at him and he was busy freaking because “hey, I think Nico just came out to me and he said he liked me and I don’t know what to do, I don’t even know why Annabeth likes me and oh fuck, Carter, I’ve asked him for so much shit and I am the worst” and so on and son until Zia took the phone and told Percy to call back later.

Which he did.

And Walt made a quiet motion to it, nothing explicit, which Carter guessed made sense. The forties were probably not the best time for that kind of thing and Nico likely was still getting over some things. Carter could relate. He still woke up terrified out of his mind and thinking that maybe he made a mistake.

But the gay thing was it with Nico.

So why was he so calm about him and Sadie? Not that Carter didn’t like it. It was just… Weird.

Which, in hindsight, was a terrible fact to realize.

That it was weird when someone took it nice and calm that, yeah, Sadie was his sister. That it was weird when there was no look of surprise, confusion, searching for the littlest bit in either of them.

Weird when there was no doubt.

Maybe he was blind.

Nico dropped Sadie’s hand and caught sight of something behind them. “Oh! Hazel!” he called out. He cut his gaze back to the two of them. “Hazel is-” and a short girl slipped I to place beside him, carrying a filled glass and a small sheepish smile. “-my half-sister.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and cleared his throat. “Roman side.”

Oh.

Sadie made a vague noise at the back of her throat before grabbing Hazel’s hand and grinning wide. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same,” Hazel said. She passed a drink to Nico and kissed his temple. “Jason’s looking for you, by the way.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “Jason’s always looking for me,” he grumbled, glancing around. He scowled and ducked behind her. “Tell him I died.”

Hazel gave a chiding, “Nico!” before he vanished into the mingling crowd. She shook her head, pushing back her hair as it fell into her eyes. “Jason’s kind of pushy,” she explained briefly before smiling soft and wide. “You’re Carter, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, accepting her grip.

She nodded, a soft giggle slipping from her mouth. “My dad says yours is funny.”

Carter tried to wrap his mind around that for fifteenth time then gave up. It didn’t matter if Horus hung out inside his mind half the time. He still had trouble with understanding that his dad was technically a god. Forever. And therefore hung out socially with other gods. All the time.

It made so much sense and yet none at all.

“So how did you and Nico meet?”

There was some Roman drama and honestly Carter tried to care when Percy talked about it but really, there was only so much empathy he could have. Granted the whole “I walked through hell with my girlfriend and am consequently thoroughly fucked up from it to the point where I literally cannot think of any other person to discuss it with” thing grabbed his attention for most of it.

But that was the whole reason for the party. A chance for the Romans and Greeks and apparently Norse and a couple others that the gods had glanced down at and said they had no idea who these kids with very evident magic were to meet and mingle and maybe get comfortable enough to  _not_ do anything stupid to each other in the future.

Of course, Carter wasn’t stupid. The gathering was small and would always be because the Nome could only hold so many people. And luckily, most of the people were friends of people he already knew. Percy and Annabeth and Grover and Drew, who Sadie knew, not him, but from the way She grumbled about her he already had some inkling of her to start with.

Diplomacy in the making.

He’d hoped his dad was proud.

Hazel smiled soft. “Oh, well, he found me in the Underworld.” She cleared her throat then dropped her voice. “I’m like him. Except I died.” Sadie winced and Hazel gave a short laugh. “Nico pulled me out of the Underworld. He said I had more purpose than dying too young and Dad-” She gave a half-hearted shrug. “As long as I don’t draw any attention to myself too badly, he’s letting me stay.”

“That’s nice,” Sadie said. “Especially after you helped save the world and shit.”

Hazel gave a quick giggle. “He’s a good man. I know he’s proud of me.” She gave a soft nod to the crowd where Nico was hiding. “Of both of us.”

Maybe it was because the gods utilized them, because they had to communicate to function properly as an overpowerful unit, but Egyptian gods were more giving and open. They actually talked to them. Sometimes awkwardly. Standoffish. Rude.

In Horus’s case, with the amount of class of a goldfish and the fighting desperation of a small cat.

But at least they didn’t leave their magicians stumbling around blindly, with no help and an emptiness in them.

Not like the demigods.

 _Who were their actual fucking kids_.

But at least Hades, it seemed from what Hazel just said and whatever Anubis muttered into Sadie’s hair when he was tired and someone was asking a lot of questions, was one of the better ones.

More involved.

“Sadie!” Zia ducked her head between the two of them and twisted to face Sadie. “Your boyfriend is whining for you.”

“Which one?”

Zia’s face dropped and she deadpanned, “The dog one.”

Sadie rolled her eyes and fluttered her fingers at Hazel before vanishing into the crowd, calling out, “Nubis! I’m literally right here!”

After Zia kissed Carter’s cheek and vanished into the crowd, yelling at Felix to  _stop conjuring penguins_ , Hazel raised an eyebrow. “Dog?”

“Anubis,” Carter explained. “He’s a god, jackal head and whatnot.” At Hazel’s confused and disturbed look, he went on, “It’s a very strange relationship. We’re only just now used to it and they’ve been dating for like three years.”

“Oh.” Her brows furrowed. Then she relaxed and shrugged. “Well, whatever makes them happy, I suppose.”

Carter bit his lip. “You were born way back when?” She nodded. “There were- there were people like Sadie, right?”

The thing was he  _knew_. He knew mixed kids existed, always had. It would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise. But the world acted like they were never light-skinned, never passing like she was. In movies, in books, on TV, he’d see the rare couple, the rare child but no one like his sister. Like the sheer concept of white-passing kids, kids like Sadie, didn’t exist. They were all like him. Very clearly the unwanted half of the equation or, at the least, very clearly mixed.

Which annoyed him to no extent, because it was clear what they were trying to get at. And it had  _always_  pissed him off that everyone seemed to fall for it.

But he’d wonder sometimes and they’d talk about it, small moments here and there or longer conversations when Sadie or him would finally snap at the baffled looks of some people when they said they were related or if Sadie cleared up the misunderstanding, that, no, she wasn’t white, she was  _mixed_.

Did they ever recognize themselves? Or did they accept that it was better to be viewed in a pleasing light and pretend and pretend and pretend until the world just accepted that, fine, this is what they look like when they’re born? Only like him. Never her.

Hazel’s eyes slipped a confused glance before understanding dawned and she nodded again. “Yes but they weren’t treated kindly if people knew. Better than I was. But people said things and sometimes…” She faded off then smiled soft. “Some would pretend but the ones that didn’t… They were brave, I think. To accept both sides of yourself and come together with no qualms about your worlds or to be  _proud_  about it, almost. Especially in a place that would sooner lynch you for something you didn’t have any control over.”

He winced and she shot him a soft apologetic look.

Seemed like even in the past people were morbid as hell about their situations.

She ducked her head ever so slight and smiled soft upward to him. “That’s why I really like this idea. Coming together and learning one another. It’s the only way things change. I had friends who had so many worlds. So many…  _ideas_  of things I only had one and it’s nice to see a world where everything opens up.” She gestured lightly around the room. “It reminds me of a school I went to. Happier though.” She laughed. “We didn’t mingle much with the other kids. Or at least, everyone else didn’t. I like people. And I wanted to know.”

He smiled and glanced around the room. “Also not too many white children, I imagine.”

She let out a sharp snort and bumped his arm, affectionately.

“Is it easier now?” she asked after a beat, now watching Sadie shimmy awkwardly around Anubis, who’d been dragged out into the dance pile. Walt grabbed her hand and spun her around. She grinned at him and kissed his cheek before pushing Anubis into him and making the two of them twirl around together.

“A little,” Carter said, understanding the layers in her question. “But I don’t think by much.”

She let out a sad little sigh, all annoyed acceptance in the breath. “Well, at least I can share the same seat as Nico now.”

 _That_  was disorienting.

School was so weird and sure, his dad taught him everything he could’ve ever tried to know, but homeschooling had a different structure and Carter didn’t like to think of the past, the bad evils of the world, and his dad was thorough but the conversation of any of it was uncomfortable for both of them and they moved through it quick. He knew his place was different from Sadie’s and her place was different from what their mom’s would’ve been, no matter how similar she looked to her, and he knew why but he didn’t need the logistics because it hit too close to home and it stung to think of how a slight difference in the history of all it all could’ve left him in the same shitty situations.

All that was important was that he knew.

But Hazel didn’t seem all that affected, just jived a little bit in place, and quietly he wondered how difficult it was to die knowing one thing and then coming back, all her past memories there and intact, to find it slightly different than when she left it.

She seemed to be doing a good job of adjusting.

But demigods were strange, weren’t they? A bunch of children treated like soldiers. Sure, Sadie and Carter and Walt and Zia had been kids but there were no adults on the path of the gods when they fought, so few willing to  _try_.

If another war broke out soon, something Carter doubted unless Percy’s track record scored another win and they ended up in the middle of it, there would be adults this time around.

Nico reached out and snagged Hazel’s arm with a quick pull and tugged her out into the circle as Percy swept him back, laughing. Nico fell into him, scowled but nothing serious, and began dancing old-school with Hazel, too busy giggling, especially when a big guy stepped in to join them. When he did, Nico looked around, scowled again but grabbed Percy’s hand and began teaching him how to be less  _jerky_  and more smooth. Something Percy still wasn’t picking up on.

But it seemed like Percy’s panic was all for naught.

Sadie grinned back at him and he fluttered his fingertips at her before cracking his knuckles and throwing himself into the fray. She slung her arms around his neck and jumped in place.

“I like them,” he said into Sadie’s hair.

Sadie spared a glance to Hazel and laughed into his collarbone. “Me too.”

Hazel had finally separated from the other guy and went back to Nico, who gathered her up and shimmied in place with her. He was born way back when but Carter vaguely remembered Percy, or maybe Walt or Anubis, saying something about him having lost his memories. They were slowly coming back to him.

Maybe that’s why-

He stopped himself.

No.

It was very clear on his face, the wide grin as he dipped his sister back and the laugh as she pulled herself back up fast and her hair swatted him in the face. It was clear he loved her. It was clear he saw her as his sister.

And Carter had the sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t have mattered if he remembered anything or not, if he’d remembered the way the world he was born into had worked.

Like Carter to Sadie, he was her brother.  _Half_ , fine but still.

It didn’t matter what she looked like, what he looked like. How her father may have appeared to her mom compared to his.

They were family.

That was the only thing that counted.

**Author's Note:**

> FINALLY GOT AROUND TO POSTING THIS.
> 
> Aaaaaand, you should all have figured this out by now but I like vaguing my issues onto mixed characters and interracial relationships because I am a mixed kid, aka the product of an interracial relationship. Plus, I never see people ever actually discuss Hazel and Nico's relationship aside from "they're siblings and they love each other". I think there's a lot there that can be worked with, especially when you pan to the mood of "Hazel still has very present memories of racism and segregation" and how that relates to her and Nico's sibling-hood.
> 
> For people that like to quote on and on about Riordan's diversity, I never did see much of it discussed, even when I was a lot more active in the fandom way back when.
> 
> Either way, hope you all enjoyed that. Next fic I'm thinking of will steer a little farther from racial emulations and more into stupid plot and Sadie terrorizing Percy for the fun of it.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://happyk44.tumblr.com/post/176733745617/and-this-is-sadie-carter-said-squeezing-her) || [Other Links](http://linktr.ee/hk44_art)


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